<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Dorothy, I was going to ask you, when you got married, you knew Bob's father was I.K. Ishimatsu, who was a pretty big deal in the Japanese American community. Did you think about that much?

DI: No, I didn't think much about that. He was the most wonderful father-in-law a daughter-in-law could have. He and his, and Mom, they were such good in-laws. I could not have had anyone better. They were such wonderful grandparents to my girls and my son. They were there taking them to the beach, to the amusement park, no business entered into our relationship, it was all social, being grandparents, and they were always so generous with me. And I know one of my... not one, more than one, had always said I was so lucky to have in-laws who can speak English. That made a big difference with them.

TI: So your father-in-law, I.K., he did speak English pretty well?

DI: Oh, he was bilingual. Everything was English. My mother-in-law spoke English, my father-in-law spoke English, I never spoke Nihongo to them; I didn't have to. So I didn't realize my friends had envied me, because they had to speak Nihongo to their moms, all my Mountain View friends, none of them could speak English to them. So I didn't realize how fortunate I was. I just took it for granted, I was so lucky. Really lucky.

TI: Now when you got married to Bob, what kind of expectations did he have of you as the wife? Did you have some differences in views about what you were supposed to be like and do, and can you tell us something about that?

DI: Oh, my goodness. We really were not that conversational type of a couple. Because we basically knew we wanted a family, that I would be taking care of him, and that he would be the provider. Basically that was the setup. And within that framework, we took trips, we did things, I went to adult ed. classes, and we took turns with the children and he would put them to bed, I would go to my adult ed. class just to get a change of pace from changing diapers. We just worked things out between us, and my mother-in-law would watch the children while Bob and I went to some function. And we never really, we were never verbal in that sense, discussing our lives. We just kind of fell into it and just worked itself out. And if we wanted to do this, we just brought it up, said, "Okay, we'll have to get a sitter, we have to do this." Or as the girls got older, we knew they could take care of themselves. We just put Lorie in charge or had my sister-in-law come over and stay with them, and we would take off on our little adventure. And it just all kind of worked itself out. We never argued about things too much, it was just kind of... I don't know. Our daughters said they never heard us argue. And when I thought about it, that's true, we never did argue. When their friends would ask, "Don't your parents ever have fights?" Said, "No, we never even heard them argue." So I guess they're right, we never did.

TI: Can you tell us more about Bob? He was introduced to Christianity when he was in the army.

DI: Yes, he was.

TI: And you were Buddhist still.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.